作者介紹：
Steve Harmon是美國風投創始人和管理合作伙伴，曾擔任過Jupiter Media公司VP，Paul Kagan Associates機構分析師，他的創業企業Applied Semantics在2003年被谷歌收購，是谷歌Adsense概念創造者之一。現著重投資互聯網領域，對中國互聯網和網絡新媒體有深刻研究。他寫的《零重力1.0》和《零重力2.0》成為彭博社最暢銷書籍，比爾蓋茨、楊致遠也讀過他寫的商業報告。

社交網絡是一種自助心理分析，分享本我、自我和超我。

但是我們真正想要的是：“相關網”。這是正在來臨的現實。你應當了解。

在展望未來之前還是讓我們回顧歷史。

1994年的雅虎，當時雅虎用的還是斯坦福大學的服務器

1994年雅虎出現時，當時的互聯網還很容易歸類。所有的網站都可以輕松地用一頁地址簿記錄下來。這幫助了雅虎成為王者。楊致遠和費羅正在讀電子工程學的博士，建立該網站只是出于業余喜好，而網站也是位于斯坦福大學的網站 akebono.stanford.edu的目錄下。楊致遠和費羅兩人聲稱當時有23836個鏈接。這就是1994年的雅虎。

那時候沒有垃圾郵件，沒有彈出廣告，也沒有網絡銷售，甚至也不需要服用“偉哥”。我記得那是網絡的一個美好時光，整齊、簡潔，就像一個圖書館。

在1996年春季雅虎上市的時候，它是大部分網民使用的網站。AOL還是一個在線信息服務的提供商，而美國乃至全世界很大程度也并未與網絡相連。

那時的蘋果正以AOL為目標，并推出了自己的在線服務eWorld。我當時有幸它的首批用戶，不過可笑的是原來eWorld中的e是empty（空白）的意思，因為根本沒人使用它。

1994年eWorld的早期在線服務

1996年，AOL開始想美國家庭大量投遞印有其logo的3.5英寸軟盤，促使其注冊用戶數量攀升，股票價格大漲。是的，當時軟件是最主要的工具，還有9600波特撥號調制解調器。

3年后，AOL收購了時代華納（Time Warner），并要搶走華德·斯特恩(Howard Stern)的“媒體之王（king of all media）”的稱號。

另外還有Pointcast，當年最受歡迎的單一在線服務。安裝這個軟件之后，它會全天候向你發送與你選擇話題有關的新聞。很多IT經理都不喜歡這個軟件，因為它占用太多帶寬了。Pointcast可以稱得上是1996年的Twitter。

下面來看看1995年亞馬遜“開張”時候的樣子吧

亞馬遜首個主頁

上述很多的網站或服務現在已經不再是網絡的“熱點”或者使用最多的了。但亞馬遜是一個特別的例外，它的顧客越來越多，服務范圍也越來越廣。

今天，網絡由谷歌、Twitter和Facebook把持，但明天他們未必還是王者。我認為我們現在正處于另一個轉折點，因為現在的網絡過于凌亂，谷歌搜索的結果沒有03年那么準確了，Twitter充斥著垃圾信息，Facebook也被冒充 “近況更新”的游戲廣告所占據。現在的網絡和電子媒體正面臨一個前所未有的巨大的轉折點。下一代的網絡將與“相關性”有關。但現在很少有公司意識到這點。

網絡發展簡史：

萬維網（World Wide Web）（1993-1995）

專業內容網（Professional Content Web）(1996-2003)

社交網（Social Web）(2003-20??)

相關網（Relevant Web）（20??-20??）

網絡、媒體、銷售和企業將不得不作出大的調整以成為“相關網”的一部分。網絡上有太多的信息，而且過于雜亂，人們根本無法消化。這已經超越了語言學的范疇，真正關聯的是信息和數據的意識。更少意味著相關，這是關鍵。沒有人有時間去檢查狀態更新看誰午餐吃了什么，沒有人有時間去細看郵箱里的垃圾郵件，沒有人有時間去上傳自己院子的照片，沒有人有時間去想如何才能把自己的信息縮減到140K字節， 沒有人有時間去Buzz。

以下為英文全文：

The Relevant Web: Need To Know

The history of the Web until now has been about the blocking and tackling of information. Porting offline to online. Yada yada yada.
Social web is kind of a self psycho-analysis sharing of id, ego and super ego.

But what we all really want is this: The Relevant Web. It’s coming now. What you NEED to know.

But let’s see where we’ve been before we get to the future.

Yahoo 1994 when it was hosted at Stanford's server

In 1994 when Yahoo debuted the Web was easy to tally. So many sites all fit nicely into a directory of links. It’s what made Yahoo king. The Web was a hobby, its directory hosted at akebono.stanford.edu where Jerry and David played hooky from their electrical engineering studies. The Web according to Jerry Yang and David Filo was 23,836 links. Here’s Yahoo in 1994:

And it worked. This was before spam. Before advertising. There was nothing to sell and no Viagra to take. I remember it was a great time for the Web, neat and orderly, like a library. In fact, Jerry and David were basically librarians. They used to be speakers at librarian conferences.

By the time Yahoo went public in April 1996 it was the Web to most people. AOL was still a proprietary online service, closed garden, and hadn’t yet discovered mass mailing disks to every home in America. America, and the world, was not online to any large degree.

This was round about the time Apple decided it wanted to be AOL and launched its own closed online service called eWorld. I was one of the first to subscribe and the joke soon became that the ‘e’ in eWorld stood for “empty” since nobody used it. You’d enter the town square and talk to yourself. Echo.

eWorld 1994 - Apple's early online service

By 1996 AOL began mass mailing sign up disks (3.5″ floppy) to every home in America, prompting a surge in its sign ups and boost in its stock. Yes, floppy disks ruled the day, as did 9600 baud dial up modems.

AOL floppy sign up disk

Just 3 years later AOL would go on to acquire Time Warner and proclaim itself  “king of all media”, dethroning Howard Stern.

Other early rockets were Pointcast which was more popular than any other single service online. You installed it and it sent you news all day on topics of your choice. Its launch was standing-room only and most IT manager hated it since it hogged their bandwidth. Pointcast was the Twitter of 1996.

Ten years away from profits here’s how Amazon looked when it first debuted:

Amazon's first home page

There are many more examples. Most of the above are no longer the “hottest” or most used sites or services on the Web today. Amazon is a notable exception, based on its customer service and expansion.

So today as Google rules, Twitter tweets, Facebook fawns the fact is that these companies may not be the winners tomorrow. I’d say we’re at another turning point when the big Web is just too cluttered, Google results aren’t very accurate as they were in 2003, Twitter is being overcome by spam, and Facebook has been invaded by gaming ads disguised as “status updates”.

We are at a turning point in the Web and digital media. Bigger than before. The next Web is about relevance. And few companies today deliver anything close to that.

Evolution of the Web:

The World Wide Web (1993-1995)

The Professional Content Web (1996-2003)

The Social Web (2003-20??)

The Relevant Web (20??-20??)

Web, media, retail and other companies today are going to have to make major adjustments to become part of the “relevant Web”. There’s simply too much information flow and clutter for people to digest any more. It’s beyond semantics, it’s awareness of information and data.

Less is more and less means relevance is key. Especially with mobile. Nobody has time to filter through status updates on who’s having what for lunch. Nobody has time for an inbox of spam. Nobody has time for uploading photos of their front yard. Nobody has time for wondering how to keep their message under 140k. Nobody has time for buzz. It’s all the rattle and hum of information without relevance attached.

u2 Rattle and Hum movie poster

Information ABOUT information is the future. Veins of gold in the hillsides of earthen dust.

The relevant Web is here and growing… first a trickle and then a downpour.